Is It Worth It?

Summary

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Podcast Superfriends – "Is It Worth It?"

Date: June 3, 2026
Hosts: Matt Cundill, Jon Gay (JAG Podcast Productions), Katherine O'Brien
Episode Theme:
A detailed roundtable where three of the five Podcast Superfriends dig into the question every podcaster faces: are the tools, gear, and subscriptions we pay for actually worth it? From download metrics to Riverside, Descript, microphones, AI, and hassle-bashing tools, the trio compares experiences to help podcasters make smarter choices.

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Episode Overview

The June 2026 Superfriends episode sees Matt, Jon (“JAG”) and Katherine discuss which podcast tools, software services, and even hardware are genuinely worth your hard-earned dollars. They debate current best practices for audience metrics and expose how price increases and new features are shaping everyday workflow decisions. If you're seeking honest insight into where veteran podcasters invest their budgets – and whether you should too – this is a can’t-miss conversation.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Problem with Podcast Metrics (Download Counts vs Engagement)

• 00:57–06:46
  • Jon/JAG explains the flaws in relying on downloads as your main metric:
    • Downloads may reflect automatic pulls, not actual listens.
    • Engagement—how LONG people stick around—is the real value.
    • Look for where listeners "fall off" in analytics and ask “why?”
  • Katherine is adamant that these debates are “boring and reprehensible,” especially for indie/niche shows:
    • Quote: “I have a personal fatwa against discussing this topic. I think this could not be more boring...for the average podcaster, this is really never going to be a problem.” – Katherine O’Brien (03:39)
    • She values action-based engagement: “Is the audience you’re cultivating doing the thing that you want them to do?” (04:16)
  • Matt argues the discussion matters because of persistent misinformation:
    • Example: Guests asking about "downloads" instead of audience fit.

Niche Podcasts & Audience Value

• 06:46–07:22
  • Jon’s "basket weaving" analogy: 100 listeners for a specific niche could be more valuable than 10,000 generic listeners.
    • Quote: “If you are a basket company, I bet you'd pay decent money to get in front of a hundred people that care enough about basket weaving to listen to a podcast about it.” – Jon Gay (JAG) (06:46)

How Platform Changes Skew Your Stats

• 07:24–10:16
  • Matt: Spotify download counts dropped 25% for his network because video engagement doesn’t count toward downloads.
  • Jon details the aggregation nightmare: If you care about numbers, you now must manually add Apple, Spotify, YouTube, plus RSS feed stats.
    • Quote: “If you are running a podcast for a business...now you’re having to aggregate from your RSS feed...and it’s very, very cumbersome.” – Jon Gay (JAG) (08:03)
  • Apple’s analytics for video podcasts? Still unclear.

Are Free and Cheap Tools Worth It? Spotify, Riverside, Streamyard & More

• 11:54–18:45

  Spotify for Podcasters

  • Jon: “At free, you get what you pay for.” Free hosting is risky—outages mean your show is gone everywhere. Independently hosted shows are safer.

  Riverside.fm

  • Jon pays $30/month (billed annually). He moved all new clients to Riverside from SquadCast due to reliability, features, and support.
    • AI tools like “Coco” are solid for quick blog posts/thumbnails.
    • Quote: “It is a more reliable recording platform, less prone to error. And they have added so many features.” – Jon Gay (JAG) (14:45)
  • Katherine echoes: “I have rarely had any kinds of problems at all...It’s gotten a lot easier with less tech-savvy guests.” (16:20)
  • Transcription: distinguishes speakers well (17:27)
  • One pitfall: If a mic disconnects, Riverside might default to the wrong input (laptop mic, not pro mic).
    • Quote: “If there’s any interruption to the audio, it defaults to not the mic you selected.” – Katherine O’Brien (17:57)

  Descript & Squadcast

  • Jon left Squadcast for serious sync issues and missing frames.
    • Quote: “Good luck.” – Jon Gay (JAG), reacting to Matt’s continued use (18:52)
  • Descript’s editor is better for some features than Riverside’s. Both Jon & Katherine pay for it and like tools like filler word removal and “Regenerate” for fixing flubbed/garbled words.
    • Quote: “The [Descript] regenerate tool, if someone flubs a word or it just gets garbled ... it can regenerate a single word ... that is awesome.” – Katherine O’Brien (22:38)
  • Both mostly use a workflow combining multiple tools rather than relying on just one.

  Streamyard, OneStream

  • Matt left Streamyard after steep price hikes ($300 → $800+ per year), but found it worthwhile as a single tool (if that's all you need).
  • He’s experimenting with OneStream Live ($300-400/year): jury’s out.

Other Key Tools & Their Value

Headliner

• 29:14–30:35
  • Jon uses it for making custom audiograms/videos and rough transcripts for clients.
  • Katherine: no longer needed since Descript/Riverside cover those features.

AI Tools

• 31:14–44:20
  • Katherine uses Grok (via Twitter/X premium) and Claude for creative writing/troubleshooting.
  • Jon subscribes to ChatGPT ($20/mo), building custom “GPTs” that prep show notes, chapters, clips, etc.
    • Quote: “A GPT is a custom set of instructions, a repeatable action...it gives me timestamps, suggestions on clips, keywords…” – Jon Gay (JAG) (33:00)
  • Matt leverages AI mostly for data crunching and notes that jobs that took hours now take minutes.
  • AI is still inconsistent; e.g., ChatGPT got lazy with timestamps, Grok sometimes makes mistakes and admits it.

Microphones

• 34:12–36:25
  • Matt: Shure SM7dB—adds needed gain so you can skip a Cloudlifter.
  • Jon: Stays happy with his (classic) SM7B + Rodecaster Duo Mini.
  • Katherine: Recommends the Rode PodMic at $99 as a reliable, affordable entry-level mic.

Audio Leveling & Editing

• 36:25–47:12

  • Levelator: Free, “worth it” for normalizing spiky audio, but can sometimes boost breaths (Jon); works great for Katherine after she learned it’s now available for Windows too.

    • Philosophical takeaway: Don’t assume a tool’s not available for your OS—things change, stay current.

  • Adobe Creative Cloud: Pricey, getting pricier, but Jon can’t live without it; beware buggy updates.

  • Izotope RX: Jon loves the Deep Breath tool and regular cross-grade deals; upgrades “always worth it” (at the right price).

Other "Worth It" Utilities

• 47:12–53:52
  • Jon: Password apps (critical for managing podcast asset accounts), Dropbox/Google Drive (especially for big video files).
  • Matt: Endorses Dropbox for smooth file movement, especially as video demands grow.
  • Katherine: Willing to pay for “reduced hassle” as value rises with experience. Starlink internet: worth it if it keeps you online.
  • Jon’s wife’s wisdom: “time value of money”—sometimes it’s best to pay for time/hassle saved (like pod editors, painters, etc.).

Bonus: CoSchedule Headline Analyzer

• 48:29–51:11
  • Katherine: “...a tool to create hook, enticing headlines because that is something I didn’t feel good about...it’s helped me become a better headline/episode writer.”
  • $100/year; gives confidence in titling for podcasts/YouTube.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “You could have an audience of a hundred; if it’s the hundred right people, you can do almost anything that you want to do.” – Katherine O’Brien (05:42)
• “If you are running a podcast for a business... [platform fragmentation] is very, very cumbersome.” – Jon Gay (JAG) (08:03)
• “[Riverside] is as close to a one-stop shop as I’ve seen.” – Jon Gay (JAG) (15:02)
• “Paying for reduction of hassle is huge. My threshold for what I’m willing to do to reduce hassle ... has gotten much lower.” – Katherine O’Brien (52:41)
• “Much like if you hire us to produce or edit your podcast and get all those hours back in your day—that for you is money well spent.” – Jon Gay (JAG) (53:28)

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Useful Timestamps

• Download/Engagement metrics: 02:03 – 06:46
• Spotify, video, and download metrics: 07:24 – 10:16
• Spotify for Podcasters – is “free” worth it?: 11:54 – 13:20
• Riverside experiences & features: 14:45 – 17:57
• Descript, text-based editing, “Regenerate” tool: 22:38 – 25:25
• Streamyard & OneStream Live price/value: 27:21 – 29:14
• AI tools (Grok, Claude, ChatGPT, GPTs): 31:43 – 44:20
• Microphones (Shure/Rode): 34:12 – 36:14
• Levelator & Izotope RX: 36:42 – 47:12
• Dropbox, hassle-cost, “time value of money”: 51:11 – 53:52

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Practical Takeaways

• Metrics: Use downloads cautiously; focus on engagement and actions from your audience.
• Platform Fragmentation: Adding video can lower download stats; decide what metrics (or platforms) really matter to you or your sponsors.
• Software:
  • Riverside and Descript are leading choices; using BOTH leverages the best of text/audio + rich recording reliability.
  • Free solutions may have hidden costs in reliability or control.
  • AI tools can supercharge workflow but can’t replace human judgment (yet!).
• Hardware: Entry-level gear can sound great—don’t overspend unless you must.
• File Management: Invest in reliable storage as your video and audio library grows.
• Hassle Reduction is Worth Money: Sometimes the “best” tool is the one that simply saves you the most time and stress.

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Closing Thoughts

The Superfriends send a clear message: “is it worth it?” is personal—but regularly reviewing your podcasting expenses and tools is as important (and ever-changing) as show content itself. Stay flexible, embrace experimentation, and always value your own time.

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Transcript

[Podcast Super Friends Announcer]

The podcast Super Friends 5 podcast pros talking tech promotion, marketing ideas and strategy.

[Matt Cundall]

It is the June edition of the Podcast Super Friends. My name is Matt Kundal. I am coming to you live from the province of Quebec, Canada. And we're joined by a couple friends here today. Normally we've got five. We got three today. And they'll introduce themselves starting now.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

John Gay from JAG Podcast Productions, Lovely Berkeley, Michigan, just outside Detroit.

[Katherine O'Brien]

Hello, everybody. This is Katherine o', Brien, podcast producing in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

[Matt Cundall]

Johnny Podcast was going to join us today, but he said he was called out to a fire. Now, when he says that, does that mean he's putting out a fire? That's pertaining to work, but we assume

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

that that's, I assume, either client or baby related. I'm not sure which.

[Matt Cundall]

Thank you. That's what I thought, too.

[Katherine O'Brien]

But I, I trust, I trust Johnny just to be able to handle almost any situation that comes up.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

So we agree on that.

[Matt Cundall]

Yeah, Yeah. I, I generally expect that he could get a job like that done in about 10 minutes. So, and, and David Yaz, he could be joining us just about it anytime, because I know he never misses an opportunity to promote the stuff that he does. But I, I'm glad we're doing this today. So normally we would do this on, on streamyard and we'll get into that shortly. And why I've ditched streamyard and we've moved ourselves over to something else we're testing out here called One

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

Stream.

[Matt Cundall]

One Stream. Thank you.

[Katherine O'Brien]

Let's not tank our sponsorship before we even get started here.

[Matt Cundall]

And so we'll talk about some of the things, some of the tools that we use, because this does feel like we're trying out something new just to see if it works. And we're not even going to try out all the toys in the box here today. But Jag, one of the things that you emailed back to us today and when I said, what do you. What are the things that you're thinking about that when you're doing podcasting is the download. So talk a little bit about that and we'll see if we can solve that problem.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

I don't think it's anything we're going to solve today, but I know we've talked a little bit about this offline and, you know, for years, the metric for all things podcasting was the download. How many people are going to listen to your show? And that had a number of problems as podcasting involved in including bots, which is, you know, not completely, but largely been filtered Out. But the problem is a download only measures, depending on which platform we're talking here, generally only measures who pulled your show down out of the ether or the RSS feed, depending on how you want to phrase it. The problem is it may automatically download if you're subscribed to the show. The person may never view or listen to your content. The real better metric, as we've seen, is coming consumption, as Matt would sell you in radio terms, we'd call that tsl. Time spent listening. Did somebody download your show and just listen for a couple minutes and say this isn't for me? Or do they stay through, you know, 80, 90, 95% of your show until you said, hey, we're leaving. Bye bye. Last question. So you really want to dive into how much time people are spending with your show? Or is there anything in particular in your show where you're looking at that graph and it just falls off a cliff? Could that be a commercial, an ad? Could it be a feature of your podcast that your audience just isn't really feeling? Could it be something offensive? Your host or your guest said something like that. So you really want to kind of go into the deep dive on the analytics and Apple and Spotify in YouTube and see how long people are listening, not just they clicked on your show.

[Matt Cundall]

Katherine, do you have any solutions to this to solve all the world's problems in five minutes?

[Katherine O'Brien]

I, as, as I have said privately to this podcast super friends that I'll now share with our incredible audience, I have a personal fatwa against discussing this topic. I think this is just. Could not be more boring. I think it is just, it is totally reprehensible that we are how many years into podcasting and this is still a topic. I, I actually think that for the average podcaster, this is really never going to be a problem because as we have been discussing, podcasting is a, is a niche market for a niche audience, which is, once you know those things can be a very helpful thing to know. I think that the much better metric that you should use if you're a podcaster is is the audience that you've cultivating doing the thing that you want them to do? Do you want them to follow you on social media? Social media? Do you want them to sign up for your email newsletter? Do you want them to interact with you? Do you want them to engage in some other way? I think that's for the, for the average podcaster, that's going to be it. I just, I just cannot get excited about talking about this. Ten Years on.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

Really? Because you sound kind of fired up

[Katherine O'Brien]

except to, except to be a pill about it and be the podcasting heel that I sometimes am.

[Matt Cundall]

So I'd love that you're fired up about it. But I also think we have a responsibility to talk about this because of all the information misinformation that's out there about this. I'll give an example.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

All that fake news.

[Matt Cundall]

Yeah. Well, I asked somebody, I said, would you come on my podcast? And they said, well, how many downloads do you have?

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

Which is a standard boilerplate question to ask.

[Matt Cundall]

Yeah, but does it really matter if I have a hundred downloads and my audience is. Is about, you know, an industry podcast about, about broadcast and that person were, say, in broadcasting, wouldn't that be an automatic yes? It doesn't really matter if I have a hundred, because if you go on a show with a thousand downloads and they don't have any broadcast professionals listening, you've done yourself a disservice.

[Katherine O'Brien]

Right. Well, this is the, this is the niche that we were, I was just mentioning is that in podcasting, one of the great things is you could have an audience of a hundred. If it's the hundred right people, then you can do almost anything that you want to do. I mean, that could, you could actually have a business proposition from having a small audience if they're the right people. So I think that your point is really well taken, Matt. If you have the, the niche of broadcasters to podcasters, that is a specialized audience, and if you're tapping into it and you can put people in front of that audience, that's going to be meaningful. That's the real gold of podcasting. I, and I know, I know because I also have a, an ego. I, of course I want massive numbers of downloads, but I would rather have engagement and people doing the thing, an audience doing the things that we're asking them to do, that is, is going to be more valuable.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

Loving Counterpoint is. You did say engagement. Somebody listening and spending more time with you would be one form of engagement.

[Katherine O'Brien]

True.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

And to your point a moment ago, Catherine, the analogy I always give to new clients is the basket weaving analogy. The old joke about the college class of basket weaving 101. If you had a podcast about basket weav, you might get a hundred people that are going to listen to it. But if you are a basket company, I bet you'd pay decent money to get in front of a hundred people that care enough about basket weaving to listen to a podcast about it.

[Katherine O'Brien]

I agree. I actually, I decline your loving Counterpoint, Because I think that is a complimentary point. I don't think that's a counterpoint.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

Sustained.

[Matt Cundall]

I'll move over into a territory that JAG touched on in his latest podcast episode, and it has to do with Spotify. But one of the things that I did with my network last year is I measured 2025 against 2024, and we had a decrease in downloads for Spotify of 25%. And the reason is because of video. And people started to upload their video to Spotify, and those no longer count as downloads. And Jag, you talked a lot about this recently when it came to Spotify and the many different ways to count, and it's being a problem.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

Well, yeah, and this is in the podcast, the JAG Show. Since Dave's not here to promote his podcast, I'll promote mine. If you upload, I mean, Spotify. The title of the episode is Beware of the Siren Song of Spotify and one of the two siren songs of Spotify in addition to their hosting. We can touch on that later. But it's the idea that, hey, you can put your video on Spotify, people. If people are following your show on Spotify, why have audio when you can have video, too? Well, the problem with that is the audio will count toward your downloads. The video won't. And so now you're going to be having to aggregate. If you do care about downloads as a metric, which many people still do and probably rightfully so, you are now having to aggregate from your RSS feed. So folks who've downloaded the audio on Apple or Spotify or Amazon or iHeart or wherever, the views on YouTube and the views on Spotify, because the video downloads are on a different technology and they do not count as RSS downloads. If you have a host such as Simplecast, art19libsyn, whomever, your downloads from that video are not going to count to the number your host showing you. So now, particularly if you're running a podcast for a business and you have a boss that has KPIs and wants you to answer, you know, metrics for the podcast, well, okay, well, give me a minute, boss, because I got to go over here to YouTube and then I go over here to Spotify and then go here to my podcast host, and it's very, very cumbersome. So to me, it's just not worth it to put your video on Spotify. Unless downloads are not a consideration for you and you just want the exposure. You're not worried about actually metrics and tracking it

[Matt Cundall]

this podcast, by the way, is not on video and Spotify. It is on video in Apple. And we have not yet seen how we're going to be counted as the podcast super friends. So let's say somebody gets this far into the show and they're listening on audio. If all of a sudden they want to choose to flip over to the video side, I'm not sure how that's going to be counted in the back end of Apple just yet. I don't think they've introduced the metrics. I haven't been able to go in and do a deep dive on this, but so far there's no video metrics back there.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

Interesting.

[Katherine O'Brien]

I would also say Jag. Now I'm going to give you back 11. Counterpoint is that from at least marketing professionals that I've seen, they love to talk about across multiple platforms. So there is sort of an appetite with certain marketing campaigns that they want to know, like, what are we doing video here? What are we doing video here? What do we, they, they love that sort of breakdown plus the, the overall aggregated picture. People love to plump up their, their presence by saying, oh, across platforms we've got this kind of presence. This is how many followers across platforms. So I, I, I think it, you know, the unsatisfying answer is really, it depends. And I think that it depends on what people are looking for, how they are measuring things. Again, I'm not, I'm not saying it important. I just, I cannot get excited that, that this is, seems to be a persistent problem that I, yeah, well, and

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

you're pointing about across platforms, Catherine.

[Katherine O'Brien]

Yes.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

What's interesting about that is, you know, you're talking about say a celebrity with a social media following and they're doing goodbye and they're saying, okay, well, I've got 7.4 million followers on Twitter and I've got 10.6 million on Instagram. Etc. There's a lot of overlap. There's, and Matt, correct me if I'm wrong here, but on the research, sometimes folks will consume a show on Spotify, sometimes they'll consume it on YouTube. So while it's, yeah, it's great because you can sell the sizzle and say we have, add all those numbers together and say we have this many followers across this many platforms, a lot of them can be redundant. It's not an accurate number.

[Matt Cundall]

Right. Downloads often are. I think that's why you have to go to the unique listeners which will filter out the IPs and you can probably get a better idea about the size of your audience in a particular month or for particular episode. Further to that, Jag, as I'm gonna be asking questions about is this worth the money? And we'll start with Spotify for podcasters. And the price on that is free, but is it worth it?

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

At free, you get what you pay for. And that was the other piece of my podcast is we have seen outages on Spotify in the last six, 12, 18 months. So if you are hosting on Spotify, that's great that it's free. And maybe you're a hobby podcaster, maybe you don't have the in your budget to spend $15 a month on top of your Disney plus and Netflix and Hulu subscriptions, and that's fine. But if you are going to invest money into this as a project, if you are hosting on Spotify and Spotify has an outage, guess what? Nobody's getting your content because that's where it lives. You're not going to get it from Apple, you're not going to get it from Spotify, you're not going to get it from Amazon, you're not going to get it from Iheart or, you know, random podcast application xyz. If it lives on Spotify and Spotify goes down, you are sol use an independent podcast host and one of the platforms goes down, you can actually consume it or get your content somewhere else.

[Matt Cundall]

Okay, Catherine. Oh, gosh. Gives up. Yes. Did you switch out the mic?

[Katherine O'Brien]

No, I did not. I. I dealt with another situation.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

Nevermind, you did switch out the mic. It's picking you up out of your laptop.

[Matt Cundall]

Yeah, we're catching your laptop right now. That's fine. That's what editing is for. Right.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

And that's what we do on a regular basis for our clients, and we're

[Matt Cundall]

always editing stuff up. Right. Okay, thanks a lot for that, Jag. So I want to talk a little bit about today or some of the tools we might use here to decide if they are worth the money. Now, we make payments every year and I make the joke every week that I buy five tools and I use 20% of each and I'm still paying for just about everything. But decisions need to be made. First thing, I think we realize the price is going up all over the place on a number of tools. So if you have used this tool, please talk about any of the price increases that you've encountered over the last little while. Jag called me out when I said I was going to try this tool out here in particular, and he said, why didn't you just go and get Riverside. And I've just been holding off on getting Riverside for it. I work with Riverside with my clients but. And I know Riverside is, you know, rather durable, but when it comes to live, I really wanted something that sort of specializes in that. So jag Riverside overall, whether you have a network version or an individual version, is it worth the money and what's the cost? What are you paying?

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

Yes, I am paying $30 a month for it. I think I pay, I get a break because I pay annually. And I am really impressed with Riverside. And I don't just say that because Kendall is a previous guest of this podcast.

[Matt Cundall]

Friend of the show.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

Friend of the show. Thank you. They are rolling out more and more and more content. I really got frustrated with Squadcast and their tradition, their transition rather to Descript. I didn't even bother to try to script rooms after hearing mixed reviews on it. So I put all my new clients, started them on Riverside and with one or two exceptions, I've moved all of my SquadCast clients over to Riverside. It is a more reliable recording platform, less prone to error. And they have added so many features. They're now offering hosting, which full disclosure, I have not tried. None of my clients have tried that. They are offering video integration to Apple. I believe that's still being rolled out. They are constantly replying to folks in their Facebook group with feature requests and as we dubbed it in our episode with Kendall, Coco, their co creator tool. I've been playing with that this week and it's pretty good. I said write me a blog post based on this podcast. It was my three minute podcast I posted today and it wrote me a blog post for my website only. Required some light editing. Gave me some, you know, some YouTube titles, some podcast titles can generate artwork for the podcast. It's, it's as close to a one stop shop as I've seen. So very excited, very excited about Riverside.

[Katherine O'Brien]

Wow, that's great.

[Matt Cundall]

Catherine, you're back.

[Katherine O'Brien]

Yay. I also would put in a vote for Riverside is absolutely worth it. It's. It's a great platform. I, I have rarely had any kinds of problems at all. I have also used some of the, tried to use Coco to do some thumbnails. I think that they probably have some room to go with that and especially since thumbnails are a specialized tool. I also want to start using, I want to give it a shot. It's just a, it's a workflow question of trying some of their edit. Edit the episode, you know, do the whole edit of the episode in Riverside because that could be really, that could be really beneficial since I'm already a customer and it's. They've gotten a lot easier with, let's say, less tech savvy guests signing in and being a part of the show. I'd like some of the improvements that they've made there. So all those things are really good. And I also give a vote for Riverside as being an absolutely worth it.

[Matt Cundall]

So question, I'm not a user. If I were to get a transcription in there, will it separate the speakers?

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

Yes.

[Matt Cundall]

Really?

[Katherine O'Brien]

Yeah.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

If either from a Riverside recording or if you uploaded an MP3 file or an MP4 file for that matter, with two people on it, it'll give you Speaker A, Speaker B or Speaker 1, Speaker 0, and you can label them.

[Matt Cundall]

So from your experience, both of you, what is the, what is the thing that happens with Riverside when a recording goes sideways? Is it because I know they happen. I read all the news groups. I have a few clients where stuff goes sideways. So what is the number one thing that will cause a Riverside recording to go sideways? Because it's always the user. Right.

[Katherine O'Brien]

Well, actually, very apropos of what just happened to me moments ago, what I've had problems with clients before is if there's any interruption to the audio, it defaults to not the mic that you had selected. So I've had lots of clients who, something goes wrong or they have to come back out or, you know, something, something impacts audio. And now the, the fancy mic is not being picked up. It's being picked up from the laptop or somewhere else. Anywhere you don't want it to be picked up. That's where, that's where it likes to go. And, and, and so then the, the entire recording is with that, that lesser mic or the laptop mic or the phone in your pocket. I mean, it's just, it's been amazing some of the places that it'll go.

[Matt Cundall]

So that moves me over to Descript or Slash squadcast. So squadcast is something that I am still using to record.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

Good luck.

[Matt Cundall]

Well, tell me why.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

I, I have had issues where the odd. The files are out of sync. I had one client in particular where I had to manually move every time there was a transition between her and her guest because squadcast the, the videos were just not lined up. Well, I have had issues where there have been frames missing out of videos on Squad Cast with a couple of clients. I, I do like the scripts editor. I think descripts editor is better than Riverside. So I still keep it both. I still keep both subscriptions, but that's what I. Because this is my full time job. If I were a part time podcaster, if I had to pick, I'd pick Riverside.

[Katherine O'Brien]

Yeah. And can I give one more vote for Just for Riverside? That's something that I noticed that's going on. And again, shout out to prior supers friends, guest Kendall. They are doing community webinars and other sort of interviews that seem to be very much getting the podcaster life. So for example, one of their most recent webinars was about getting people to live events based on podcast appearances. And I thought, oh, they, they understand something about what podcasters, even smaller podcasters are doing is that they are doing a podcast to cultivate an audience, to get the audience to do something like go to a live event, like go to a conference, like go to a workshop. And I thought, I thought, okay, that is smart. That is providing the kinds of information to podcasters, meeting the podcasters where they're at. This is what we're trying to do with our show. This is how we're trying to connect with people. So it made me really think, like, okay, Riverside is paying attention to what the podcaster needs and is giving them the resources to do it.

[Podcast Super Friends Announcer]

We love that you're listening to the podcast Super Friends. You can watch the show on YouTube, at Johnny podcasts and at sound offmedia. Yeah.

[Matt Cundall]

Jag question for you about rooms.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

Okay.

[Matt Cundall]

Have you had any rooms, by the way, is from Descript.

[Katherine O'Brien]

Have you?

[Matt Cundall]

Tell me about your experience and your limited experience in using it so far and why you just said no. I, I got to move on.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

0i. I'm gonna, I'll be completely transparent here. I haven't tried it. I have had. I. I saw some stuff online of people saying they loved it, some people just saying they were hating it. And just on my general frustration with squadcast, I decided, you know what? Riverside is a better product. I know it. I think it's more user friendly to somebody, maybe on the beginner side, on the text, on the tech piece of things. And I just didn't even bother to try it.

[Matt Cundall]

Wow. Okay. Because I'm using Squadcast and it's kind of like your favorite pen. This is my favorite pen that I have here right now.

[Podcast Super Friends Announcer]

Right.

[Matt Cundall]

I always love my favorite pen. And let's say my favorite pen were to disappear, I would go and get another pen, but the company would say, oh no, we've made this new pen that you might like to try and say, no, I'm going to Try this other pen instead of I'll also get

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

off your lawn while you're at it.

[Katherine O'Brien]

Yeah, but you know what?

[Matt Cundall]

Because Katherine was just talking about webinars and the great job that Riverside does with it. But you know, Descript, I felt like they were trying to sort of get everybody jump started into Rooms because we're here and Rooms is out and you know, of course it doesn't work anything like, you know, Squadcast used to. So I kind of feel like they're trying to get everybody on board to use it. And I've used it a couple times but I'm not excited enough to go and use it on a regular basis at this point. So with that said, obviously we can't recommend Squadcast because it's being phased out, but now we're looking at the script. Let's just take the rooms portion out of it. Is it recommendable and is it worth the money? Catherine Jag Catherine Matt.

[Katherine O'Brien]

Well, I will say and maybe this is a sub issue, maybe this is a therapeutic issue that we can deal with in just a moment is I'm grateful for Descript and the ease of the text audio. Edit your audio like a Word document. I think that has been tremendous. I do see that they are making and I'm a paid, I'm a paid customer also to Descript. I have seen how much better they've gotten with some of these one click solutions like removing all the filler words, like removing retakes, removing errors. All of those things are getting better. One of the tools I really like in descript right now is the regenerate. So if somebody flubs a word or it just gets garbled in the recording, it can regenerate a single word without big complicated permissions and it just through AI can make it sound pristine. And that is awesome. So I do see that they're moving on all of these things but as I just mentioned a minute ago, I have a fondness for Riverside I can't break into. I this is a problem. This is my, this is the therapy session portion of this response is that I do. I know I have a problem with. Once I get a workflow going it's. It is difficult for me to break routine and try something new. I want to try the Riverside just just to see to test like you were saying, jag the test, leave the full edit because right now I'm recording Raw in Riverside, bringing it over to Descript using descript for those. The ease of the one clicks that it does so well. But, but if There was one of them that did the whole enchilada. Then I might just, I might go for one tool.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

Yeah, I, I have tried the regenerate tool in Riverside once or twice and it'll find it worked. And I found it worked well.

[Katherine O'Brien]

Yes.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

Again, you know, when somebody or somebody garbles a word to your point, Catherine, or if somebody says three, but they meant to say two, you know, and you can't get the guest back to re record it and it's an important piece of information, something like that. So I, I do like it. I just, I feel that the editor for pulling out ums and us and other false starts is a little bit smoother in discrete. But Riverside is improving. Yeah, I like having, I like having the Versaille do both and honestly, if you get somebody who recorded on a laptop microphone or not in less than ideal conditions, a lot of times what I'll do is I'll run it through Riverside's Magic Audio, I'll run it through Descript Studio Sound, I'll run it if it's particularly bad audio and I'll run it through Adobe Enhanced. Not all, I mean not all together, but separately and figure out, you know, which one for that particular piece of bad audio was the best fit that I can live with.

[Katherine O'Brien]

Yeah, three layers of magic there. You've got, you've got three different kettles that you can work with there to get them.

[Matt Cundall]

I think that's my point. There's a great example of just using a little bit of each one of these tools in order for it to be, you know, worthwhile. We, we get used to it because we, you know, get used to it using descript. We like to edit up using the words we like, you know, we like the certain, like Studio Sound for instance. Sounds like it's doing a good job in descript. But at the end of the day, if somebody can't afford each one of these tools, you have to make some choices, right?

[Katherine O'Brien]

Yeah, exactly. Now, the one thing that I should. I was just had a nightmare reminder about is there is a, There is a cost to having just one. If Riverside was down, if Squad Cast was down, if one of these things was not working, then you are stuck because you don't have. If you're. You've got all your eggs in one particular way of doing it, we'll all end up on Zoom like we need David. Yeah, understand that. Joe's. We'll end up back on Zoom or some other way to. To be video recording.

[Matt Cundall]

Yeah. I had a client actually today Recording a podcast and they said there's some skips and blips at around minute 36. And you know, it. He. He just thinks it's between the two of them that they were recording it. But it didn't register on the recording because of course, the local recordings that get uploaded in this case to. To SquadCast. This has also come up, I think, one time before, and that is AI credits inside Descript. Now, I.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

This is another thing that Dave is probably our resident expert on. It's a shame he's not here today.

[Matt Cundall]

Yeah.

[Katherine O'Brien]

Are you.

[Matt Cundall]

Are you grandfathered in on the old pricing system, Jag or.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

No, they eventually, I think phase. I was grandfathered in for quite some time and I think I. They eventually moved me over to transition to a different plan.

[Katherine O'Brien]

Same.

[Matt Cundall]

Okay, I'll just speak to Streamyard for a sec. Streamyard decided that they would raise everyone's prices to a point of about what originally started for me at 300 a year became 3503-753904-10444 last year. The rate, by the way, if you signed up today, is 44 bucks a month. That works out to US$800 a year. And because they decided, oh, you work for a particular company, your new bill is going to be $4,000.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

Good Lord. Yeah.

[Matt Cundall]

And so I was like, no. And goodbye. Very, very fast. Wow. Now, if you are a company, that's the rate you pay. It's probably about 3,000, but I had some extra seats involved. But for individual users, it's, you know, I think the core plan is about 44, $48 a month. Maybe a little bit more now, but still, I thought as a tool, it was very, very. It's worthwhile if it's the only one you use.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

Yeah.

[Matt Cundall]

And you're not paying for too much else. You can do things. I'm, as we're, by the way, going through this, I'm playing around with. With this. This new tool called One Stream. You can find it at OneStream Live. It'll take a little time, I think, you know, to configure everything up to make sure that it looks kind of the same as what Streamyard. What I could do with streamyard. There are a few limitations right now. Is it worth the money? Well, we'll see. I think one year of this particular product, I think comes in at about 4. About 300 plus dollars US. About 400, yeah. 3 or $400 US for a pro plan, so. But again, jury's still out. We'll Do a few episodes on this of the podcast Super Friends here and then we'll make a, make a decision here on the, on where to do and where to go next with it. So far so good. Hopefully it's. Hopefully the streaming is actually streaming.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

Yeah, we'll find out.

[Katherine O'Brien]

We'll find out.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

Yeah.

[Matt Cundall]

Other tools that we use. Does anybody use Headliner?

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

I still use it for one or two clients, actually. I have a couple of different use cases for it. One is I have a client that records video but still produces an audio podcast. I use the video for the real and then for the audio podcast, I, I make a video for YouTube. I could, I mean, I could just use the RSS feed, but I like having a custom thumbnail for each one. So I'll use her Audio, make an MP4 file out of it for YouTube. So that's one use case. The other use case is I have, I have a chat GPT. I used to write my show notes off a transcript. I have one client that doesn't, doesn't need exact transcripts. So I've used Headliner's transcription feature just for a rough transcript enough that I can write show notes off of.

[Matt Cundall]

I think it's called Eddie, right?

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

Yes, Eddie Eddy. Yep. But now that I think about it, I'm recording in Riverside. I can just take the transcript from Riverside now. So I probably don't even need that step.

[Katherine O'Brien]

I never made the plunge to paying for Headliner for anything. And now I use. I use either Riverside or Descript for everything I used them previously for.

[Matt Cundall]

So I like it still, but not for the same reasons about why I started using it. I still like the fact it makes nice audiograms. They are taking some steps to get into a little bit of video. But I love how I can create those manual YouTube videos for audio only Podcasts and with the direct upload to the YouTube page is quite handy. It's. I've had it, do you know, I think for a summer it did 200 episodes of a particular podcast I was doing and it took probably about six weeks to complete.

[Katherine O'Brien]

I think I've heard of podcasters who are trying to get back catalogs onto YouTube, using it for this big giant batch of creating episodes.

[Matt Cundall]

Yeah, I think that's probably its best feature right now. One of the things I wanted to talk about was, was AI and who's paying for that? Is anybody? And it's too bad Johnny's not here because I know when we talk to Johnny, he's he. He's all into cloud.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

That Young whippersnapper.

[Matt Cundall]

We're going to talk about things. We have no idea what we're talking about here but does anybody use pay for an AI tool?

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

Catherine?

[Katherine O'Brien]

Oh, well, I guess sort of indirectly because I do, I pay for Twitter and so I have Grok, but I think, I think Grok is available to anybody even if you don't have a check mark. But I use Grok a lot and I like Grok a lot. I used to, I do sometimes still use Claude for creative writing kinds of things or. But I use I primarily the AI tool I go to the most is Grok. I, I like it.

[Matt Cundall]

How much is the Twitter or The X subscription? 80 a year, something like that, which makes sense. 105 Canadian. Okay. Yeah, yeah.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

I subscribe to Chat GPT. It's 20 bucks a month for the plan that allows me to create GPTs. I actually, full disclosure, I'm starting. I've been working my way through this courseive IO course that I kept seeing ads for in my social feeds. It's basically a one stop shop that it's a, it's a course in every of one of the main AI products. So I did the course on Mid Journey, which is graphic design. I did the course on Claude, I did the course on ChatGPT and Claude does seem like a better version of Chat GPT that said that, you know, I'm still, I'm still in Chat GPT and I'm still trying to learn how to maximize it to my best use.

[Matt Cundall]

What's a GPT?

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

A GPT? Oh, fair question. A GPT is a custom set of instructions that is a repeatable action. So I have a GPT that I downloaded and found on the web that I customized to my ability. So when I get my podcast transcript, I upload it to my GPT. The GPT then writes the show notes in my voice. It gives me timestamps for YouTube and Spotify and Apple Chapters. It gives me suggestions on clips for social media and it gives me. What's the other thing? It gives me one other thing I think as well. Oh, keywords. So, so that's kind of one stop shop for me. And it's not just set it and forget it. I go in and I manually will tweak things. But it's a great starting point to summarize, write the show notes and take care of all that.

[Matt Cundall]

I'm a paying customer as well of ChatGPT and I couldn't tell you exactly what a GPT was exactly.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

But by paying you have access to GPT. The free version does not.

[Matt Cundall]

Yeah, actually. And so I did actually start this process using Spotify spreadsheets. So Spotify will send me just a whole bunch of. Of spreadsheets and I can take a whole year's worth of those spreadsheets, put them in, and then ask for a bunch of things from it and get the breakdowns. Which, by the way, is how I did come up with that. We're getting 20% less downloads, you know, over the years due to video and yeah, it's great. You can ask it to do a few things. I know, I listen, I'm not big on AI, but that job used to take me four hours, five hours in a day and it took a minute to give me the answer. So I don't know what to say except, yay, we have microphones in front of us and Jag before we started today, you asked me if this microphone was worth it. Not really. You actually said, do you like it? So this is an Smart. It's a short SM 7 DB and it gives you a little bit more gas that I don't need to go get a cloud lifter. Okay, so is it worth it? Well, it's the same price if I went and got the Cloudlifter in order to level it out and make, you know, to bring it up to the right, right level. So, yes, I guess it's worth it. It saves me a little space here on the desk.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

So mine is plugged into a Rodecaster Duo Mini, which essentially gives it the boost that the Cloudlifter would need. So you guys tell me how I sound, but I think on my old school B, I don't think I need to upgrade from there.

[Katherine O'Brien]

You sound sounds of JAG Podcast productions.

[Matt Cundall]

And it's also. I had this on the list today and that's the. The Road Pod mic. Is that what you're using, Katherine?

[Katherine O'Brien]

Yes, it sure is. I, I recommend and it's. It's $99 now. It is my. The only problem is that it is USB only, so you do have to think about a focus, right, The Scarlet or something like that. But I. This is now my go to for recommending for people who are just getting into it. You great sounding mic without a real hit to your pocketbook Jack.

[Matt Cundall]

Do you know the price of the SM7B?

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

I think it's 400 and the DB is 500American if I'm not mistaken.

[Matt Cundall]

Yeah, I don't want to quote everything in Canadian money. It just makes everything sound so expensive.

[Katherine O'Brien]

Plus its nickname Is the looney. Right. So 500 loonies.

[Matt Cundall]

500 loonies will get to this. All right, so just a few audio tools. Levelator was one that came up the other day when we were having some discussions offline. Tell me about it and how much and do I want it.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

It's free.

[Katherine O'Brien]

It's free.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

So it's worth it. If you have audio where the level is all over the place, it's a nice way to even out your levels. I'm trying to figure out how to do it in the newer version of Izotope rx which is a really high end editing platform. But I think I, I think that Level later does pretty well. The only thing is it, it sometimes will boost the breaths, but not always. I'm not sure what your experience is with the Catherine.

[Katherine O'Brien]

Yeah, no, I, I have not had that problem. I really. It's a great tool and in fact if I can, you know, I like to get a little philosophical here. Let me, Allow me to share a story. This is a good growth mindset story for the podcaster and it involves the level Later. So originally level later was just available for Apple and I do not use Apple. I have a. I use Windows for

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

my Apple as well.

[Katherine O'Brien]

Yes. See all my grudges are coming up today on this show. Everybody's going to learn all the grudges that I keep. This is terrible. Anyway, so there was no, there was only level later for Apple and I just fixed it in my. Everybody was said it was just such a great tool and I fixed it in my mind. Okay, that's. That is not a tool that is available to me. We'll just go and figure out other things until many years later when Jag said to me, no, they level later has a Windows version. And I was like, you're kidding me. So now I am happily using the level later on my system and I just realized that I did get fixed. People add services. People add different features. They go and use, they make them, their products for different kinds of operating systems. And so even if there's something that is not available right now for Android or Windows or Apple or whoever is, you know, keep it on the keep. You got to keep fresh on what is going out there, what the company is doing, what the products are. Well, who's doing the best job because they do change all the time. So it is important to stay up on what the companies are putting out because you don't want to be caught in version creep or version decay where you're using old versions of things when newer features would be better for what you're doing.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

And if you can't keep track, ask us. I know to your point about streamyard price skyrocketing, Matt, I was very frustrated. So I live in the Adobe ecosystem. I edit my audio in Adobe Audition, I edit my video and Adobe Premiere. I basically, I could not, my business would not survive without Adobe. Adobe is now the subscription model. I know we all know some radio and production people who have like an older standalone version with very few bells and whistles because they don't want to pay the subscription. Well, for the full suite of Adobe products, they went from 675 to 825 for the year. And I thought that was a pretty steep price increase, but they've got me by the you know what's. And I can't do anything about it. Well, as it would turn out, they upgraded from the latest version update to Premiere and it was bogging down my whole computer. I'm thinking, okay, maybe I've got too many other things running in the background. So I closed everything else and it was still slow to the point where I couldn't click through the menus. So I got my IT guy on the phone who knows everything and he looked at it and he said, this is odd. And he went on a couple forums and found the latest version of Premiere is so buggy that on some systems you can't use it. So the solution was retroactively go back to the prior version of Premiere and now it purrs. So thanks Adobe for charging me $150 more per year for an inferior product.

[Katherine O'Brien]

Yeah, well, and, and just I, as a, as consumers, like this is one of those things that you, we all have to get, we get to the point where it's like, okay, now my Internet bill is so high or now my, our insurance is going up. So that's the thing that forces you to be the consumer advocate for yourself and just see what's out there. You know, like you're in, your example is go to your IT guy and find out what you have to do to, to get it to where it is going to work for you. And you know, it is easy to sort of get complacent with these things, but we, we, you know, it's, it's better to stay on top of it all.

[Matt Cundall]

Yeah, I thought that too. Because again, most of these things are going up in price very, very quickly and you know, budgeting decisions need to be made. I'm not sure, maybe the discussion is Good to have the discussion in June as we approach halfway, you know, through the year. But I just see the prices of some of this stuff just going up. I'm like, where do you get off? What makes you think, why do you, you know, especially when, you know, when

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

they're charging, they're charging more because their expenses are all getting higher, not because they're offering a better product.

[Katherine O'Brien]

Better product, exactly. Yeah.

[Matt Cundall]

Well, maybe you don't need to add so much AI. Maybe you can give us an option that doesn't involve AI. And I know I cite Microsoft, by the way, for that because they, and I asked, I said, can I get a version without Copilot? And they said, yes, we will, we will accommodate you. Yeah, because I was loud and obnoxious

[Katherine O'Brien]

about it, not you. You were kind and polite about it, I'm sure.

[Matt Cundall]

I don't need, I don't need four or five different ways to use AI. Yeah, you know, Copilot was going to be another way to do it. I completely forgot, Catherine. I mean, I pay for X, which means I get Grok. I don't even use Grok and I'm paying for it. And maybe I should.

[Katherine O'Brien]

I'm going to tell Grok to look out for you and you bring Gro something for you to do.

[Matt Cundall]

Well, should. I mean, because I, I downloaded clothes. I use chat GPT and pay for it. I downloaded Claude Cloth the other day and should I be, you know, but should I be paying attention to Grok?

[Katherine O'Brien]

I would say yes. I think it's a great. For the, for the things I've asked it to do. Troubleshooting. It's excellent. I, I love saying step by step, brief answer, bullet point, and just I can. It keeps a history. So even though it's not a technical GPT like you were mentioning jag, I can go back so I can have a running thread and bring it, you know, bring something new to that old topic and it'll conform to the, you know, I don't have to re. Explain the whole thing again.

[Matt Cundall]

I've had some times when I'm on X and I'll say at Grok, is this BS that this person is saying true? Yes, it's completely true. I'm embarrassed. How do I delete this and get rid of this?

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

But a lot of these AI tools are certainly not foolproof. For example, I mentioned this. I don't know if I mentioned this publicly or in our private monthly chat, but the GPT I was using for timestamps got lazy on me and started rounding the timestamps off. Instead of giving exact timestamps, it started me rounding it off to 30 seconds and I had to keep telling it. Finally I had to go into the GPT and the instruct manual instructions and say, give me exact timestamps to the second. I had. Matt, you'll appreciate this. I. I had a radio friend who was moving markets and he couldn't tell me where he was going because of some HR issues with where he was going. And I asked based on what I knew about where he was going. I said, I gave Chat GPT the information. I said, can you narrow down which city he might be going to? And it didn't, it didn't include the city I thought he was going to. And I said, well, what about City X? And he said, and it said, oh, you're right, my mistake. I should have included that one. Okay, thanks.

[Matt Cundall]

Maybe, maybe these things are just too human. Oh yeah, you're right. I just didn't feel like getting to that part.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

Yeah, yeah.

[Matt Cundall]

Jag, you talked about Adobe. Can I use the Adobe podcast enhancement feature without a full subscription?

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

That's a great question. I don't know the answer to that. You need to have a login for Adobe. I don't know what level of subscription you would need to be able to access that suite of tools.

[Katherine O'Brien]

Okay, I bet we can guess. With Adobe the answer is going to be no. But let's see. Hey, go ask Rock if you can

[Matt Cundall]

and does anybody here use Isotope? All right, so Jag, I have not upgraded this in years. Is it worth the money for the

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

tools that are in there for me so far? Yes. My. And again, I It's like when I go to the craps table, I know about 20% of the board I and I stick in my comfort zone. That said, I personally, through my taste, have found the Deep Breath tool in their new RX12 to be the best one I've used so far. I have found it to work very well and you can set it to natural so it's not any sudden drops. I just finished editing an hour long video podcast today and to be able to run the file through izotope in 10 or 15 minutes as opposed to having to stop every time I get a breath in Adobe and cut it out is worth it to me. Their mouth D click is improved. All of the existing modules have improved. Now again, to your point about AI, Matt, there's a whole bunch of oh well, we'll use AI and we'll analyze your video and your audio and we'll give you a suggestion of a module chain of which tools to use in which order and which intensity and blah blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't need all that. I don't need to analyze my audio and give me eight suggestions in order. I've got my standard tools that I use which are largely deplosive and Mouth Declick and now Deep Breath. Occasionally I'll use their Dialogue Isolate feature, which is fantastic. And then there are bunch rules, I don't know because I haven't used them yet. But everything I've used has been worth it. And what I like about Adobe, if you're not paying the monthly fee, which I'm not, if you have, once you buy their advanced package and they come out with the next level advanced every, I don't know, 18 months or whatever it is, instead of paying $3,000 for the package, they say, well, we'll cross upgrade you for a few hundred. And they get me every time. I haven't regretted any upgrade yet. And they're up to 12. I'm not sure what your version you're using, Matt.

[Matt Cundall]

Oh, I'm way back there. Like eight.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

Eight. Okay.

[Katherine O'Brien]

Yeah.

[Matt Cundall]

Should I make the jump?

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

If you, if you can get a deal for a crossover deal or wait for Black Friday or wait till they offer a deal. But, but I, I'm very happy with the newest version.

[Matt Cundall]

They do have sales that pop up that are quite enticing. They do 29 bucks sometimes for the

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

basic package, which if you're starting out, great tool for that at that price

[Matt Cundall]

point, Adobe Podcast Enhanced can go for 9.99amonth. Okay, so there is a, Is there

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

a limit on content

[Matt Cundall]

data part? I don't know. I know it's free for the, for a half hour, but I think it, it widens it quite a bit. And 99 for the year.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

They have just, they have just up upgraded the maximums on this because there were, there were some video files of mine that were too large to use in Adobe Enhance and it accepts them now. So wave, MP3, MP4, AAC, FLAC and Ogg for audio, MP4 mov and M4V for video. And I'm not sure the size limit, but it might be two gigs when you have the full subscription at this point. They also have a convert to video button which I have not played with yet, but I find it interesting.

[Matt Cundall]

What have I missed?

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

What I pay for every month? Disability insurance.

[Matt Cundall]

That's worth it.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

Yes. Yeah.

[Matt Cundall]

Is there something, is there a tool that either of you use that is so amazing. You need to share it with everybody today because it's so worth the money.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

I'm opening my spreadsheets actually look now. Let's see. Catherine, you got anything?

[Katherine O'Brien]

Yeah, but this is a. Not to beat a dead horse. This is one I've mentioned before, but I, it is helpful for me if there, there are tools. The, the top layer of this is there are tools for something for an area where you feel weak. So I feel weak with headlines. I love the co schedule headline tool. It has been a confidence booster for me and it just gives me as, you know, a tool to create hook enticing headlines because that is something I didn't feel good about. I also, I also thought, I also didn't feel comfortable making things too clickbaity. I had no sort of moderation there. It either was dull or it was like hyperbolic and not kind of the product that my professional clients really wanted. So I pay for co scheduling at the headliner tool, Headline analyzer. I actually think it's helped me become a better headline title episode writer. You can toggle between Audio, Podcast and YouTube to have it pick and help you write a better title for each of those different platforms. And that title is important. It is part of the clickability of your episode. So it's a hundred dollars a year. For me it's worth it because that's an area where I feel weak. I love being able to run things through the analyzer and just getting a read on, on, on how it is and in fact, well, you and I, not to, not to be too intriguing, but you know, we have seen some new tools that suggest headlines and I picked some of those suggested headlines and ran it through the analyzer and they were good. They had good SEO, they had good headline qualities. They were pithy. They were, you know, they had just the right amount of getting the information across by. But also making it something that somebody wanted to, you know, take the next level with and listen to. So yeah, that's a, that's a tool that I like a lot.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

Did you find those improved headlines really helped your numbers, Catherine?

[Katherine O'Brien]

I, you know, I don't. It's not like, oh, I started using this tool and everything went through the, the roof or anything like that, but it, it definitely. Well, I think it's more for me, I'll just speak for myself. It's more of a confidence. None of my, my clients rarely reject the client. The headlines that I make using this tool does that. Is that helpful at all? I can't really point and Say, oh, this has had a direct impact, but to me it's like a confidence builder for like we're putting out the episode in the best way possible for the audience. It's conveying the meaning. It's also making it enticing as well. I think that's, for me, it's worth it.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

The only other tools I'll mention, Matt, aren't, aren't specific to podcasting, but I have a password app which is, you know, 100 bucks a year and we have logins to so many of these different platforms. I think having a password app is well worth it. As well as file storage, I've got both Dropbox and Google Drive. Especially if you're going to be getting into video podcasting where it's almost table stakes to be 1080 resolution. Those files are big. An hour long 1080 file is 6 gigabytes. You want to be, you want to be cramming up hard drives, storing all that stuff.

[Matt Cundall]

Yes. Actually I've been using Dropbox for many, many years now and I'm quite happy with it. And to that point and I, you know, it was Kendall, friend of the show from Riverside, she was on my show, the Soundoff Podcast, and we, we started talking a lot about, about file movement and just that's, that's a new expense over the last, you know, five or six years because as you know, we get into video now you have to move a 6 gig file and that's a lot. And it's hard to move it around. It's hard. Especially if you have a client who's in a rural place and, or rural country. Oh yeah, absolutely. Is it worth it, Starlink? Yes, I'm going to be bringing that with me to my summer home. I don't know what that price is. I think it's, but it's going to be worth it.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

Right.

[Matt Cundall]

Or else the company doesn't operate. So whatever that price is, it's, we're paying it.

[Katherine O'Brien]

Well, I have to say, when you were jag, when you were talking, I, I thought to myself, you know, I, this is, this is one of those things about getting to a certain age. Paying for reduction of hassle is huge. My threshold for what I'm willing to, to reduce hassle has gotten much higher. So I, I, or lower, I guess. I, I'm willing to pay if it actually removes hassle. So if you can pay for Starlink and it, yes, it's more than what you would pay for your fiber or whatever like that. But you know, it's going to absolutely be reliable. It's going to have the upload download times that you need that it becomes worth it. I mean, that's your, in some ways, you're starting to buy back your time and your, your stress level. Although all of those things can be worth it.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

My wife calls that time value of money. As an example, we moved last December and we tried to paint two bedrooms. It did not go well. I painted, she tried to fix what I painted. We ended up hiring somebody to paint the two rooms and it was money very, very well spent. Much like if you hire us to produce or edit your podcast and take get all those hours back in your day, that for you is money well spent.

[Katherine O'Brien]

Wow. Mic drop.

[Matt Cundall]

I think we should just leave it there.

[Katherine O'Brien]

Yeah, that's a good way to end it.

[Matt Cundall]

Yeah. You can go to the webpage, by the way, [e-mail] podcast Super Friends is up there. All the contact information on where you can find us is on the website, by the way. And all information about the products we talked about are going to be in the show notes. And I'll try to put prices in there as well.

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

In US Dollars.

[Matt Cundall]

In US Dollars. Of course, Canadians can figure it out. I think they've learned to multiply by 1.36 on just about everything.

[Katherine O'Brien]

And, and we'll lock down a discount code for one stream if we can remember to say their name properly.

[Matt Cundall]

I will put, actually, I will put one in, in there as well because I do have, I do have a code if you want to give this, give this a whirl as well. So round o', clock, round we go. And we'll say goodbye.

[Katherine O'Brien]

Goodbye, everybody. Thank you for joining us here with the podcast Super Friends. My name is Katherine O'. Brien. Signing off from Baton Rouge, John Gay,

[John Gay (JAG Podcast Productions)]

JAG Podcast Productions at jagpodcastproductions.com Lovely Berkeley, Michigan, just outside Detroit.

[Matt Cundall]

I'm Matt Cundall, somewhere in, in Canada, just trying to figure out all the conversions.

[Podcast Super Friends Announcer]

Thanks for listening. For show notes, transcripts and the video version of this episode, check out the podcast super [e-mail],

[Connie Thiessen]

i'm Connie Thiessen, editor of Broadcast Dialogue, Canada's broadcast industry publication of record and host, host of Broadcast Dialogue, the podcast. Every week I sit down with the people shaping Canada's media landscape, the decision makers, trailblazers and storytellers behind the headlines, conversations rooted in real insight and industry expertise. If you're curious about policy shifts, programming trends, or the people making waves in radio, tv, podcasting and beyond, hit follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. And be sure to subscribe to the Weekly [e-mail] emailed direct to your inbox every Thursday.